This just makes me HAPPY!

Wow, you know, some things just make me happy.  My favorite movie of all time is the sound of music. One of my favorite things to do is give people happy surprises.  These people combined both of these when they surprised a crowd in an Antwerp Belgium Train Station. I LOVE THIS. Yes, I've seen it before, but everytime I see it I get the biggest goofiest smile on my face. I read that they had only two rehearsals before they pulled off this incredible stunt! Enjoy.

budget blues.

A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.
William Feather 

If we do not discipline ourselves the world will do it for us.
William Feather


William Feather, my new "go to" guy for quotes that drive the knife deep and twist it around a bit. I spent the three hours my little ones were in school today, and the five hours after they got home, glued to my computer screen trying to get a grip on a family budget. oh, my aching head.


This is not my first attempt. I've tried quicken, I've tried moneystrands, I've tried mint.com, I've tried my own handwritten and typewritten spreadsheets. I've quickly given up as it became either too complicated (quicken!), or did not offer the budgeting tools I wanted that showed me what was left of my monthly pay as I planned it (moneystrands!), or was simply not what I envisioned when picturing what I needed out of a budget program (mint.com). 


Well, after 8 months of my husband being off work due to heart surgery(he went back on the 1st of September, healthy and strong, God is good!), and the debt piling up and the creditors calling, I realized we REALLY needed to get a budget going, if only in order to see how much money we didn't have. So.... I went again on that elusive search and ended up spending 15 dollars today (not in the budget, but fully refundable if I don't like it) on a program I found on the web that is simply a series of linked exel spreadsheets. It's perfect. I spent the day entering all the budget categories I could think of and copying and pasting them out through the middle of next year. I then went on my bank website and I tried to figure out when in the month all the bills came due. Next, I made a long list of all the dates money will be entering the bank account and an estimate of how much money will be entering, no matter how briefly, into the hallowed account.  


Now, starting October 1st (I wasn't about to work all those hours for the 2 remaining days in September) I can simply click on the spreadsheet page that says "daily spending" and record everything in all my categories I spend each day. I even set an alarm on my phone to remind me each morning to put the previous days spending in the program. At the end of the month (or anytime during) I can click on overview and it will tell me where I'm at.. how much I've budgeted and how much I've spent on any given category. 


According to the forecast, I'm about 500-700 dollars in the hole each month. I asked Joshua if he thought we could live without utilities and maybe one of the kids, but he said no. I guess I'll have to look less obvious places to find out where to cut stuff out. Can you pawn a pile of dirty laundry? A huge help would be if I could sell the house I moved out of to marry my wonderful new family.  That would about take care of that deficit in one fell swoop. Lord PLEASE find me a buyer! 


Now, even though it has turned what was kind of fuzzy vague bad news (I think we are in the negative every month) into a cold hard fact (Heck yeah, we're really broke), I'm still happy I did it. Now I have a really pretty spreadsheet with lots of red numbers on it to back up my "no" when I tell the kids they can't have something. When the creditors call I can tell them with all certainty that yes indeed it is true.. blood can not be got out of a stone. I can send them a copy of my spreadsheet to prove it.  Also, it's a starting place.  As William Feather predicted - the world has disciplined me - and now it's time for us to discipline ourselves a little more and make this budget thing WORK.  There are no more credit cards to fall back on, the savings have been gone through. It's up to us and us alone to keep the wolves from the door, and battle back to solvency. God has never let us down before, and I believe he'll continue to take care of us as we work our way back to a safer more comfortable financial place. 


Tomorrow I'll be taking my due date data and transferring it to a calendar sheet where I can see at a glance which pay period things come due and I'm going to figure out what needs to come out of which paycheck. Then I'll be pretty financially organized and at least be able to track the money as it flashes into and out of our account faster than the naked eye can see. Somehow, that is comforting.  A starting point. We all need them. A fresh new year, a new month, a new week, a new day. Yes, even a new budget. As one of my favorite songs on the radio says:

We lose our way,
We get back up again
It's never too late to get back up again,
One day you will shine again,
You may be knocked down,
But not out forever.

(love you Toby Mac!)

So there. That's all I've got to say about that! Good night and many blessings.

confessions of an angry mother.

Okay, I admit that I'm not the perfect mom. I'm sure that was no big surprise to any of you that are parents because the quickest and most sure way to be completely and totally humbled is to have children.When you look into the face of perfection, just moments after birth, and realize how absolutely unequipped you are to do right by this little piece of heaven, you start to realize how fallible you really are.

Today though, I am sitting here just seething. I'm seething because my son Jackson thinks that copying five words out is the equivalent to having his toenails ripped out with pliers one by one. I am seething because my sweet daughter Abby is kicking her little feet and making 5 minutes worth of homework last 45. I am seething because my ex husband did not return my son's piano book, so he has nothing to practice with all week. I am seething because I feel as if I should have figured out by now how to peacefully navigate the homework/after school thing and I haven't.

Now because I am a woman I can tell you this. I was not seething 10 minutes ago. I will probably not be seething by the time I'm done writing this blog entry. Right this second however, I am in an incredibly large, all consuming seethe. My teeth are clenched, I dislike 2 out of my 4 children, and my traitorous mind is saying "you really need to go find something composed of caramel and chocolate and eat it as fast as humanly possible".  My head is pounding in time to my heart somewhere right in the middle of my forehead . I know my face has an ugly look on it. I can feel that it is all pinched up and tense. Why is it that I can get SO angry SO fast, and then be happy as a pig in slop 30 minutes later? I used to be much more consistently mild mannered before I started this whole mysterious thing my doctor calls "peri-menopause",which as far as I can tell means "you are going slowly crazy and are just going to get more so over the next 10 or 15 years until your whole reproductive system finally just shuts down and you at long last feel normal again".  (look it up, I'm sure that definition is in the dictionary somewhere!).

Okay, I've been sitting typing about ten minutes and I can feel the seethe passing. Is "the seethe" even a correct usage of words? If it isn't it should be! I'm loving all the children again. My sore clenched jaw is starting to loosen up and I'm slightly less annoyed with all the childish prattle in the background. Also, my reasoning mind that is slowly reasserting itself is happy that I had no milk duds in the house for the last ten minutes. It tells me I should go eat a healthy lunch. It chastises me that it is 3:15 and I haven't had lunch yet.  tsk. tsk. I can answer Abby's question with a smile (slightly forced, but it's there). "yes, darling, you can have an applesauce. Of course you can." move the jaw back and forth and try the smile again. okay, that's a bit better. I've been doing this several times a day, this kind of mini rebellion of the good mom. I really need to loosen up or something. Or maybe the kids just need to start freakin' LISTENING to me! oh, did I say that out loud? Did I write that down?

The Tanya Seethe. I'd say not as bad as a Blowup but worse than a Peeve. About the equivalent maybe of a Rant, although my husband would probably tell you that depends entirely on the rant.  I'm not fond of them, but maybe for now it's the way my mind and body have chosen to deal with the stress of four kids, a husband, and ex, two dogs and a crazy schedule. Another thing to look into.  I'll add it to the list.

Now, where'd I put that darn list anyway? 

Happy Dance!!

I've just met my first two big health goals on the same day! I'm down 20 pounds!!! I've got SOOOO far to go, but right now I have two pre-church happy dances to do. I'm under 220 and this morning I could fit into my favorite jeans! (okay, the big size of my favorite jeans, but still, they aren't stretchy waist old lady jeans). whoooohoooo! I'm very happy. I deserve a reward. what shall it be? what shall it be? I know! I lost 20 pounds and I fit into my favorite jeans!!! Right now, that's reward enough.

Lemons can be sweet.

I went to a women's conference at my church this morning. The theme was "when life hands you lemons".  Life handed me a dieting lemon that very same morning when the lunch buffet was set out and there wasn't a thing there without mayo except dessert. I chose a small chicken salad croissant and a piece of lemon cream pie. Not a lot of food. When I was done I was stuffed and not only that, I felt sick. It surprised me a lot. I've only been on this new way of living and eating for about 6 weeks. During that time I've had snacks, and I've had ice cream. It isn't like I've just been eating vegetables, but I guess I've been eating healthy enough that the sweet pie and the fatty croissant was enough to make my body go "ugh! what are you putting in me!" It was a sign to me that I was on the right track. If my body is rebelling over moderately unhealthy eating in small portions then I must be giving it some super good nutrition somewhere. Yay me! I am going to give the credit to my breakfast shakes. They are so stinking healthy compared to anything else I've eaten on a regular basis in many years.

Anyway. I consider it a small victory that my body was unhappy with me and I knew it. I had a protein shake for dinner just now. I feel a lot better. My sister in law just brought over pizza and I couldn't care less. well, mostly. I love pizza, I just don't need to eat it. To me that's close enough to "I couldn't care less" to be a slam dunk. Yep,Lemons can be sweet.

Small Miracles.

Okay, so it may not seem like much to most people. It may seem almost laughable to those people who tell fat people to "just not eat so much" and think it's good sound advice. To me, however, tonight was a small miracle.

My husband and I had been squirreling away some cash so we could take our four children to the fair. They rarely get to do something like that because it costs so much to take a family of six anywhere other than taco bell. But we went. The children had that light in their eyes. You with kids know what light I'm talking about. It's that light of unreserved Joy that only a child who thinks the world is a magical place can get. I saw it at times tonight in each of my children. When my 7 year old girl got a necklace with a vial of "fairy dust" tucked into the protective arms of a fairy for the incredible price of only one dollar! when her 13 year old sister helped her "fly" because of it. When my 9 year old son realized he had the money (each child got 10 dollars to spend) to go in the "hamster ball". (it's a blow up plastic ball that is about 5 feet around and they roll around inside it on the water). When my 8 year old got to "win" a giant blow up guitar (everyone is a winner!). I love it. It was magical.

Those weren't my small miracles though. It was simply this. I was at a fair. There was cotton candy. There was something called a "deep fried milky way". That's my favorite candy bar. I'm a sugar addict. All I had was a diet coke. ALL I HAD WAS A DIET COKE! and here's the real miracle. I didn't realize until we were halfway back to the minivan that I hadn't had anything else.

In the past I'd be consumed with what I would eat at the fair, and I'd be miserable and depressed if I left a fair without the largest bag of cotton candy they sell. When Joshua, my husband, told me about the deep fried milky way and said "why don't you just have it? the fair only comes once a year", I was like "bingo... I just got validated. I can go for it" and yet, somehow, someway, by some small miracle, I got out of that fair consuming only a diet coke. I don't even know how it happened.

I actually didn't consume ENOUGH calories today. I had left all these calories for the fair and then I didn't eat them. wow, now that is a dilemma I am NOT used to.

Yes Lord, Small miracles. Thank you. Sometimes it's just grace, pure and simple. It wasn't my willpower. It wasn't my plan. It was just Grace, with a capital G.

Good night, and God bless.
Tanya

Forgiveness and weight loss?

I don't agree with everything my pastor does. He uses WAY too many sports metaphors. I mean, I'm a fat middle aged female couch potato, what do I know from sports? AND, I really feel no compelling need to keep the Georgia bulldogs (or should that be DAWGS???) in my daily prayers. However, one thing he does do, and do well, is that the man preaches from the word of God.

This past Sunday my butt was up and kicked by his preaching from the word of God. His sermon was on the need for forgiveness, and how to recognize if you needed to forgive. I've always considered myself a pretty forgiving person. I don't hold a grudge long and I am very non judgmental of my friends. It takes a lot to make me mad at you (unless you are my husband who has a gift of making me madder than anybody else in the universe. I think God gave me him to me to teach me how to control my anger) ,and when I get mad I am easy to offer forgiveness. However, as he went over signs of unforgiveness in your heart (for example, do some topics that come up make you instantly angry? probably it stems from unforgiveness somewhere) I started going - oh really..really? oh...hmmm...hmmm. oh? is that so...and started looking around to make sure everybody wasn't staring at me. At any rate, the end of the sermon had me at the alter on my knees, tears rolling down my face, sucking snot (well, I was! Repentance is not always pretty!), and asking God to show me who I needed to forgive. The fact that my Wednesday night bible study has been studying a book on forgiveness for several weeks as well did not help things. It was one of those times where you know God has a message for YOU and you want to thank the pastor for not calling you out by name during the sermon.

I got a middling length list from the Lord of people I still had anger towards, and some of them were surprising to me. I guess I'm very good at pushing down that anger to somewhere deep inside and pretending it doesn't exist. In the 4 days since the sermon I've been thinking a LOT about this whole issue. It occurred to me yesterday that unforgiveness probably has a lot to do with hindering weight loss in a lot of people. Think about it.

When you harbor unforgiveness you have a literal weight on your soul. You FEEL heavy of heart and heavy of mind. Some people carry it around so long it becomes like a vampire friend. It sucks your life and your energy out of you, and drains your joy with it's sharp little pointy fangs, but it feels safe and comfortable to you at the same time. It's where you've been so long, you don't want to, and don't even know how to, let it go. Sometimes you feel you CAN'T let it go. You ENJOY being angry at the person you are angry at. You get something out of it. (Dr. Phil would say "How's that working for you?")

With that kind of weight on your mind, heart and soul, how are we supposed to accomplish anything of worth? And meanwhile, the person you are harboring unforgiveness towards is probably walking around having a great life and not thinking about you one single iota. That's the part that really rankles when you think about it. You are wasting all this energy being angry and s/he doesn't care less!

It seems logical to me that freeing your body, mind and soul from that negative addiction of anger and resentment would lift a literal weight from your body. Now, when I say a literal weight I don't mean you forgive your Dad for abandoning you and wow, the scale is down five pounds! I mean, you forgive your Dad for abandoning you and wow, you can stand a little taller, and smile a little more, and spend that time you used to fret over him doing something productive and useful. Most of all, forgiving others draws you closer to God, and unforgiveness puts up a barrier between Him and you. Hanging on to the anger doesn't hurt the person you are angry at, it only hurts you! Aren't we on this journey to love ourselves a little more, and do what is right for our lives?

I hope others will join me today in examining our hearts for unforgiveness. I plan to get down on my knees and ask the Lord to help me forgive the unforgivable. I'm not going to tell the Lord, "but Lord you don't understand what he did to me!", because he does understand. He understands every sort of betrayal and pain. And he weeps with us. And then he takes that pain and that anger and he helps us put it away for good. Forgiveness doesn't mean you have to like the person you are forgiving. It just means you aren't going to let what they did to you have power over you anymore. That you are going to give that burden away to shoulders more fit to carry it.

I believe lightening the load on our hearts and spirits will lead to lightening the load on our hips and behinds. I don't mean to be flippant, but I truly believe the healthier our spirits and minds are, the healthier our bodies will be. It's not just about Calories and exercise my friends. Travel this path with me today and let's off load some of that anger, restentment, bitterness, and even hate that we may be harboring in our hearts, and see if it makes a difference. I am excited, because I believe with all my heart it will!

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